NEXT SUNDAY with @falgoush 🌟 Children’s literature has long been recognized as a key outlet for leftists to call for progressive change through the younger generation. Books for children are so often trivialized and ignored by state censors that they offer a platform to speak openly about the problems of society to the generation that will inherit them. By integrating engaging illustrations with politically conscious messages, readers of all ages are encouraged to question authority and imagine alternative worlds. In this talk, Falgoush and Khabar Keslan will showcase examples of radical children’s books from Iran and Lebanon which find beautiful and innovative ways of addressing everything from class inequality to exploitation and the occupation of Palestine. From Samad Behrangi’s The Little Black Fish (1968), a political allegory banned in pre-revolutionary Iran, to Home (1974) by the publishing house Dar al-Fatah al-Arabi in Beirut, Lebanon, which reveals the injustice of forced displacement faced by Palestinian refugees, the panel will discuss important literary works, characters and the publishers who brought them to life in order to highlight larger themes of oppression and emancipation that embody this radical tradition.